Longer ER wait times will eventually cost lives

With seasonal influenza activity still high and many area hospitals continuing to report an elevated volume of patients in their emergency departments, Mayor Tim Burchett and KCHD Director Dr. Martha Buchanan are promoting healthy guidelines.
Submitted by Knox County Health Dept

Some executives take responsibility and others do not. It’s just how it works.

Whether you love Facebook, hate it, or are somewhere in between, credit is due to Mark Zuckerberg for testifying in front of Congress recently and, in essence, saying, “The buck stops here.”

Harry S. Truman became well known for that very phrase. It’s certainly not our current mentality. Many leaders in the 21st century simply pass the buck in order to save face and save their skin. But the reality is that leadership starts at the top.

We expect it from our CEOs of the chains where we eat and shop, leaders of churches, and principals and superintendents of our schools. And when we get angry enough, we tend to kick out members of Congress who don’t listen to and/or meet with constituents.

Whether here in southwest Missouri, or in other parts of the country, it sometimes takes a viral moment — a horrendous event caught on video for social media — before change is implemented.

We have a catastrophe-in-waiting right here in Springfield that has yet to be adequately addressed, and it’s right in our two hospital emergency rooms. But I’ll start a couple of decades back.

After having arrived in town as a university student over two decades ago, I quickly found where Cox and Mercy (St. John’s at the time) were located when a friend of mine severed part of her finger. At that time, even small emergencies like that were treated relatively quickly in the ER, in just an hour or two.

Granted, the national health-care scene wasn’t the debacle it is now, and partisan politics, while fairly vicious even then, were nothing compared to today’s standards.

Even considering those changes, the wait in the emergency rooms today will end up costing someone his or her life. Through both personal experience and that of family and friends, even life-threatening situations such as chest pain and cardiovascular events can run upward of an eight-hour wait or longer at both Cox and Mercy here in town.

That is unacceptable, and it’s a situation Lynn Britton of Mercy and Steven Edwards of Cox need to address head-on.

Insurance complexities are an issue, as are those who head to the emergency room as their primary and/or only source of medical treatment. It doesn’t matter. More must be done.

Eventually, someone will needlessly die in the Cox or Mercy ER while waiting — as has almost happened with some friends — and changes will be made. But the person may have to be prominent or featured on social media for the changes to take place. And that should not be the case anywhere in the U.S.

It’s time for Britton and Edwards to work on cutting down wait times so people don’t face unnecessary risk… the question is whether they step up to the plate before the unthinkable happens.

Christopher Dixon is chief operating officer of eLectio Publishing (electiopublishing.com) and lives in Springfield with his family.